Humor has become a huge platform whose megaphone resounds disproportionately. In the rush to be heard, Emna Achour traded a career in sports journalism where she had the wind in her sails to deliberately face the headwinds blowing on the scene for a resourceful and racialized woman. But her wake already allows other comedians like her to flourish at the microphone and to be heard.
Their names are Altesse Fumu, Claudia Lopez, Garihanna Jean-Louis, Erika Suarez and Sinem Kara. All women, all of immigrant background and all brought together by Emna Achour this weekend at Zoofest in the show Quebecers.
A nod to the anti-racist government advertisements launched, not without creating discomfort, last fall. They led the comedian, daughter of Tunisian immigrants, to bring about a meeting between these women and the “white festival audience”, as she describes it.
“My Quebec friend”
“I wanted a statement, recognizes Emna Achour, who will host the two performances of the show at L’Île Noire. I thought: why not a line up without men and without whites? I invited all the racialized women from the middle and outside the middle. There are girls in there that you don’t see on the traditional circuit, and yet they make people laugh every week on stages in Montreal. »
Thanks to his rising notoriety, the comedian had already co-created in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, The matches, the first 100% female “open mike” evening of humor in Montreal, where anyone, with experience or not, could channel their Rosalie Vaillancourt. The themes covered in this kind of show are diverse, but ecology, feminism and racism are often favorite subjects. “On the one hand, there are women who, thanks to this evening, dare to go on stage for the first time. And on the other, there are spectators who tell me that this is the first time in a long time that the proposal of a show humor interests them. »
Humorous program
Emna Achour has a humorous program, and no gust can overcome her grand plan. Born here in 1990 and raised in Laval with her little sister by parents who chose Quebec as their home, she dreamed of a career as a journalist covering the Montreal Canadiens. To the point of choosing Russian in his optional courses at university to better communicate with Andrei Markov and his compatriots.
“For me, I had the naivety to believe that anything was possible,” explains the one who wrote her first texts as a teenager and entered The Canadian Press at the age of 20 in parallel with her bachelor’s degree in journalism. “I ticked all the boxes of what I wanted to accomplish: coverage of the Canadiens, Stanley Cup finals, drafts, all-star games…”
I don’t know if there was a particular moment when I realized that I wanted to make people laugh. On the other hand, humor is a family passion. I see myself in the living room with my parents in front of the TV watching a Just for Laughs gala hosted by Yvon Deschamps…
She also writes for NHL.com and The Athletic, but after a decade of reporting hockey prowess, she’s hanging up her skates. “The rose-colored glasses with which I saw sports journalism have gone to the wind,” she says. Machismo and misogyny are still very present in press galleries. It is an understatement to say that this profession has equipped Emna Achour to carve out her place in humor.
“I don’t know if there was a particular moment when I realized that I wanted to make people laugh,” she explains. On the other hand, humor is a family passion. I see myself in the living room with my parents in front of the TV watching a Just for Laughs gala hosted by Yvon Deschamps…”
To her high school classmates, there was no doubt that Emna was going to embrace her calling as a comedian. For her, nothing less obvious. The field of possibilities has opened up one comedian at a time. First with Rachid Badouri, then Sugar Sammy, Adib Alkhalidey, and all those who followed. But if diversity has managed to express itself in the masculine, in the feminine, Nabila Ben Youssef was the exception that proves the rule.
The range of the microphone
“By dropping journalism, it’s the microphone of humor that I chose, because it has a huge, almost disproportionate reach,” says the young woman. Of course, I want to make people laugh, but above all I have things to say, and it was the most effective and quickest way to make myself heard. »
Emna trusts her pen, but, having no experience, she twice bumps into the door of the National School of Humor. She will end up taking evening classes there, where there is no preselection. One call at a time, she tries to convince the organizers of comedy evenings to let her try her luck at “open mic” evenings.
““Such a date, you are booked, come on,” I was told, says Emna. The Bad Boys of Laughs at the Comedy Room, on Crescent Street, were the first and the only ones to agree to take me… for an amateur evening! It was terrifying, but I felt good. Lots of guys, mostly Haitians and North Africans, who took care to reassure me. »
Without contact in the middle, but well equipped thanks to her former profession which accustomed her to prove her knowledge and her competence, Emna Achour crowds the stages of the Bordel Comédie Club and others recognized as being part of the major leagues of the circuit of bars. She was launched. Almost a miracle, because, as the ex-journalist explains, being the only woman on the program of a show can be intimidating, especially for a beginner.
“When you’re booked, you have to wipe! »
“These little scenes are for exploration, and most comedians use them that way,” she explains. But women must be A+. The pressure to be good is there. when you are booked, you have to burn! »
Added to this is the constraint of having to choose so-called “general public” themes. “We assume that the white man is the default mode of the public in humor, says Emna Achour. Content expected to appeal is analyzed through this filter. I have regularly performed in front of a mostly female audience, and I am often told that people would like to see how my act would be received in a context where the venue had not already been acquired. I understand the benevolent intention, but I could also be offended by the ranking of audiences. Just guys in one line up who talk about vasectomy, it speaks to everyone, but girls who talk about menstruation, isn’t that universal? »
Humor is changing, of course, but not fast enough for Emna Achour, who wants to accelerate this development by creating spaces where women of all origins can flourish on stage.
“If we don’t help each other, who is going to help us? she asks herself. After all, a good wind that pushes us in the back when we fight against a headwind, it allows us to move forward while standing.